


Joker is the Name

by icarus_chained



Category: Alias Smith and Jones
Genre: Challenges, Crossover, Devils, Folklore, Gen, Ghost Train, Poker, Prompt Fic, Robbery, Supernatural Elements, Trains, Western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 21:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1201444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crossover with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnaUvPoiTfQ">Spanish Train</a> by Chris de Burgh. The Devil's Hole Gang try to rob themselves a Spanish train. That ... was not the wisest decision they ever made. But hey. The Devil weren't nobody they hadn't beat before, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joker is the Name

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was Spanish Train, and for some reason I've had AS&J on the brain lately?

The engine screeched to a grudging halt, massive and ill-tempered over the tracks, with a good few yards between the front fender and the tree trunk blown down across the line. She was well clear, Kid thought. Had a driver with the good sense to brake in time, leave himself plenty of room. That boded well, maybe. Always nice when the people you were robbin' had some good sense about them. Meant they were less likely to do anythin' rash.

There was something niggling at him, though. Something worrying at the back of his mind as he sat astride his horse, Heyes beside him and practically jigglin' in his seat to get down there and get to business. Whatever it was, it wouldn't shift itself enough in his brain to make itself known, but there was definitely _something_ , an itch he could feel right down to his bones.

There was something wrong. He wasn't sure how he knew, some instinct from someplace deep inside him, but whatever the hell it was it had him antsier than a bear with a beehive on his tail.

Kid twitched uneasily, starin' down at the target, and rubbed a thumb against his chin. They were too long without a haul to risk passin' this one up. The boys would have his head if he tried callin' this off on a hunch. But the itch between his shoulder blades was something that had kept him alive too many times before not to at least mention it. If nothing else, he reckoned Heyes ought to know about it. If trouble was waitin' down there, he wasn't gonna leave his partner without a heads-up.

Mind made up, he nodded to himself, and leaned over to tap Hannibal's elbow gently. His partner swung around in startlement, blinking at him in confusion, and Kid tipped his hat up some to let Heyes see his eyes. He wanted his partner to see he was serious.

"Kid?" Hannibal asked, frown already drawin' down across his features. "Somethin' wrong?"

"Don't know," Kid answered honestly, sittin' back in the saddle and fixin' his eyes down on the hulking black engine waitin' below. "I don't know, Heyes. Could be nothin'. Just ... I got the feelin' there's something wrong here. Don't know what it is, but it's _something_."

Heyes frowned, brown eyes turning grim and clouded as he looked back down at the train in rapid reassessment, but Wheat, on the other side of him, wasn't near so impressed. The blond robber spat grumpily to one side, barely missing Heyes' elbow, and sent a glare against the side of Kid's head fit to fry some eggs.

"Don't tell me yer gettin' nervy on us," he groused, his horse shying sideways to bump lightly against Heyes'. "We ain't got nuthin' left, Kid. 'Nother week I'm gonna be eatin' my shoe soles for jerky. We don't got time for this."

It was more plaintive than angry, a touch of a whine in there, and Kid winced faintly. Wheat had a point. There was pretty much nothin' appetising left from their stores. If they didn't get some cash soon, they were goin' to be robbin' grocery stores instead of banks and trains, and that just didn't bear thinkin' about. 

But the fact of it was, something about that train unnerved him. In fact, if he let it sit too long, something about that train damn near _scared_ him, and he reckoned that was the kind of instinct a man ought to listen to. The kind that kept him from gettin' killed.

"... Wheat's right," Heyes said at last, looking up from where he'd been lost in contemplation of their target, a wry smile on his face and a confident little shrug in his shoulders. "We can't afford to miss this one. Feelin' or no feelin', we gotta go ahead with it."

It was Kid he looked at, apology in his eyes, but there was a glimmer of something else too. Wariness, the kind that hadn't been there before, and Kid knew his partner had listened to him. All the eager jitters had gone out of him, wiped clean away, and the Heyes beside him now was a man waitin' for trouble, and ready for it too. 

"But sayin' that," he went on, turning to look at Wheat instead, to look back at the rest of the boys, "everybody keep their eyes peeled, alright? Kid's never had a hunch wrong yet. So be ready for trouble, the lot of you. You hear?"

A quick chorus of ayes, and they were about as ready as they were going to get. Heyes glanced his way one more time, a quick visual check to make sure Kid was with him, and when Kid nodded an agreement, Hannibal flashed that devil-may-care grin of his and nudged his horse in the flanks, leading them down the incline with a whoop.

Well hell, Kid thought, as he dove right on down there after him, with the gang trailin' behind him. Here goes nuthin', huh?

The driver was as sensible as he'd seemed from the ridge, taking one glance at the pistols waving in his face and steppin' right on out of his cabin, nice and easy as you please. There was somethin' in his eyes, though, that had Kid's finger itching on his trigger. That feeling was creeping up his spine again. The driver looked at them, not with the usual fear or bluster or exasperation, but with a flash of something that might have been pity, and something that looked alarmingly like _grief_. Put the shivers right up him, all over again, and whatever bad feelin' he'd been getting on the ridge, it weren't nothing to the bad feeling he was gettin' down here.

Still weren't a cause for it, though, still weren't any evidence, right up until Wheat pulled himself aboard the first passenger carriage, opened the door, and ... stepped right on back down again. Slowly. Very, _very_ slowly.

"Uh. Boss?" he said, and Heyes was already at Kid's side before the man finished speaking, his partner ridin' up practically to his elbow and an eloquent look already leapin' between them. "Don't anybody rush to say I told you so or nuthin', but I think ... I think we maybe done robbed the wrong train?"

And when the man in the red silk vest stepped down out of the carriage after him, and five or six corpses made their leisurely way down behind him, there weren't a man jack of them who didn't suddenly and _fervently_ agree.

"You know," said the Devil to the Devil's Hole Gang, smiling a bright, paternal smile their way. "I reckon that fella might be right. But then again, from my point of view, maybe you done robbed the _right_ one." A grin like a shark, while something bright and distant and clean dropped over the Kid's vision, and the hand holding his gun drifted protective and gentle across his partner's chest. "Howdy boys. Long time no see."

Hannibal swallowed heavily, the leather of his gloves creaking against the reins, and he put on his best, most shined-up grin as he edged his horse forward, trying to get ahead and cover the others behind him. Kid kept pace with him, followed him right on down the line, because he done remembered this game, alright, remembered this opponent, and Hannibal wasn't goin' one inch nearer all by his lonesome.

You don't leave a man to face the Devil by hi'self. And you sure as hell don't leave your partner.

"I'm real sorry about that, sir," Heyes said, the words trippin' from his silver tongue and his brown eyes bright and worried. "We heard you were in Europe. Didn't expect you back for a while yet. If we'd known this was your train ..."

"If you'd known this was my train, you'd'a been fifteen miles the other direction before the brakes were even pulled," the Devil finished sweetly, and stepped right up under Hannibal's horse to rest a polite and lethal hand on his arm. "You're a right sneaky one, Hannibal Heyes. And sensible too. Always liked that about you."

Heyes' grin went queasy and terrified, the black leather of the Devil's glove heavy on his arm, and all of a sudden Kid didn't much care who the man was or how much trouble they were in. The Devil weren't nobody they hadn't beat before, and Kid had promised a long while back that he wasn't gonna see that look on Hannibal's face again. Not while he had a gun to persuade people otherwise about it.

"We're real sorry about tryin' to rob you, sir," he interrupted, his smile light and easy as the gun in his hand, while the other reached out to snag Heyes gently by the elbow. "Pickin's been real slim lately and, well, a chance's a chance. You'd know about that, if I remember correctly."

There was a long, heavy pause, with Hannibal's arm stiff as iron under his hand, and the boys silent as ... as something that weren't graves around them, and the Devil lookin' long and hard into Kid's eyes like he was tallyin' up the laundry marks on his soul. Which he might well be, come to that. And then, just when the Kid's gut was about ready to pack up ... then the Devil's face creased into a more genuine smile, and a twinkle came into his eyes that hadn't been there a second ago.

"You ain't wrong about that," he murmured, a laughing thing like Hannibal in one of his more generous moods, and he dropped his hand long enough to let Kid guide Hannibal back a pace and let his partner remember how to breathe. Their horses bunched together immediately, faint quivers running through the animals, and it took more strength than Kid had expected not to wrap an arm around Hannibal's shoulders right away and see that he was safe.

But they weren't out of this yet. And with the smile on the Devil's face, he done knew it, too.

"I'll tell you what, boys," the Devil said at last, thoughtful-like, lookin' up at them with something mighty funny in his eye. "I'm ridin' high right about now. To the tune of a hundred thousand souls, to be precise." A flash of a grin, and Kid saw the engine driver flinch out of the corner of his eye. "So I'm feelin' generous. Generous enough that I might be inclined to let y'all go, maybe even throw in some cash to make it worth your while ... _if_ one of you boys sat down to a game of cards with me. I'm playin' a mighty fine hand of poker lately. Might like to see if my luck's still in. What do you say?"

Kid looked at Hannibal, and Hannibal looked at Kid. There wasn't a lot _to_ say, they both knew that. Playin' poker against the Devil was a fool's and a suicide's game, and it could only end in tears. But tellin' the Devil _no_ was an even shorter step to an even longer drop, and it really wasn't like they had any other choice, was it?

"Whatta ya reckon, Heyes?" Kid asked, smiling soft and crooked. "You got a decent hand of cards somewhere in that pocket o' yours?"

Hannibal grinned back, all bright and terrified around the confidence in those warm brown eyes, and raised his hand to nudge his hat back on his head, the better to let Kid read his face. "I reckon I'd better have, Kid," was all he said, with that gambler's grin and that shyster's confidence to go up against the granddaddy of all conmen. "I don't reckon I've any other choice. And, Kid?"

He raised his voice, made it loud and pointed enough that even the corpses done looked in their direction, and Kid smiled a bit as he asked. "Yeah, Heyes?"

"The next time you get a hunch we oughtn't to rob a train," said Hannibal Heyes wryly, with a sideways glance at Wheat, "I'm thinking we maybe oughtn't to rob the damn train. In fact, I'm passing a motion right now. All in favour?"

And Kid reckoned the only one lookin' more smug than him at the unanimous round of agreement ... was the Devil himself.


End file.
